Day 16 - Selfie Freewrite Celebration Contest - Prize 90.999 SBD
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Day 16
Remember - Today is Win SBI Tuesday for recommending your favorite Freewrite. Can be from any day, any prompt, any freewriter. Look for the contest post @freewritehouse. Look for lots of freewrites @mariannewest in the comments of the Daily Prompt.
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Some Fun Selfies from Yesterday
So many of your selfies were great!!! This is a random pic and yours will also be here someday 🤩
See if you already recognize each other's faces.
See if you can list all the names 😊
If you haven't checked the Daily Prompt yet...
Prompt: homeless
Remember you have 24 hours to drop your selfie with you freewrite link into the comment section.
Looking forward to seeing all your beautiful faces - or masks - every day 🤪
Your selfie + freewrite must be posted by 8 AM Pacific Time on 5/30/2018
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art and flair courtesy of @PegasusPhysics
When I was a little girl, my family was relatively well off. Things changed later on, but that’s another story. As a child, I never once worried about money or food, and I never felt my parents’ stress from having to scrounge together money for rent. I wasn’t ever one to ask for expensive toys or demand anything at all, but any time I did ask, I never heard the word “no.” I never heard “mommy and daddy can’t afford that.” That came much later in life. But I live in a city with the largest homeless population in the country, where you can see people with everything and people with nothing coexisting in the same space at any given time. We learn over the course of our lives to look away and we’re told that we can’t help and that this is just the way things are, and then sometimes they even try to tell us that these people did it to themselves. I never accepted that explanation.
Small children are incredible bullshit detectors. Parents get frustrated when their kids ask questions which they believe have obvious answers, but sometimes the issue is that our answers just don’t make any damn sense. For example: I had a nanny named Kelly. (Actually, the polite term that my mother would use was “cleaning lady.”) Kelly was from El Salvador, and she fled to the United States as a refugee with her sons. They lived together in a small studio apartment in a rough side of town, and every day, I would sit in the backseat and watch as my dad drove Kelly home. She was so kind and so hard working, and never asked for anything. One day, at dinner, I asked my parents why we didn’t just buy Kelly and her sons a house. My parents laughed at this suggestion. I didn’t see what was so funny. We could absolutely afford to buy a house. It wasn’t like we had to GIVE it to her, she could just live in it. My parents told me that wasn’t how things worked and that I would understand when I was older.
The funny thing is, if we had just bought Kelly that house and let her live in it, my parents would have a house to live in today instead of struggling to get rent together. But that’s beside the point. It doesn’t make any damn sense that this city is full of so much money and yet almost 60,000 people have nowhere to sleep at night. I’m well into adulthood at this point and my parents were wrong. I still don’t understand. I still call bullshit on it.
Most of "it" still doesn't make any damn sense to me either... I guess I'm still a child xox
The disparity of wealth is a frustrating thing that there are apparently no easy answers to. I wonder if your parents think about the fact that if they'd bought that house, they would have had it as a fall back plan. This is a great freewrite.
I doubt they remember that I asked that, but I think they would feel really bad if I brought it up, honestly. When people make a lot of money they develop a mental block where they stop thinking about the less fortunate and they accept things as the natural order. This is especially true when you make a lot of money after growing up in humble circumstances and become very successful from working hard, as they did, because you get into this mindset that everyone else would have what you have if they had only worked as hard as you did. I think that once they were out of that social stratum they started to see how artificial it was, and how privileged they really were to be able to get to that point, and these days, they are much more sympathetic to the suffering of others and understand the societal circumstances that cause people to be poor or homeless. A single mother refugee from El Salvador who came at a time when the United States wouldn't even recognize Salvadorians as refugees obviously wasn't going to have the same opportunities that their little girl had, but that isn't as obvious when you're the one benefitting from the elaborate system we've made for ourselves.
Oh, I wasn't thinking you'd bring it up. I just wonder if they've thought about it themselves. I know I've made some regrettable choices many times before and although I try not to dwell on the past, sometimes I just want to kick myself for things I've done that would have had a significant impact now "If Only".
I've also never had the privilege of being rich or even well off, so I can't comprehend how different the thinking must be for someone who has lived it. Especially pre-internet, I imagine it would have been nearly impossible for most people to imagine living an existence outside of their own experience.
I'm guessing it was probably forgotten as soon as I said it and tuned out as little kid nonsense questions.
In my experience having grown up with a lot of very wealthy kids, their parents tended to pay lip service to humanitarianism without really doing much, but the kids who had grown up in privilege often were super well aware of the situation, if only out of guilt. The thing is that if you're born into that kind of wealth here, your parents are likely liberal Hollywood types. It's not like in NYC where people's parents have Wall Street money and borderline libertarian ideals, or Texas, where people have oil money. The odds are that you'd go to a high school that was based in a liberal arts type of education. Of course some people just end up as playboys spending their days floating around in their pool and having extravagant parties, but a lot of people end up working in nonprofits or something. It can really go either way. The three wealthiest people my age I have ever met in my life--like billionaire money--are all kind of f'd up over the guilt and ended up dedicating their lives to helping the less fortunate.
It is too bad that they are doing it out of guilt - but it is good that they are doing it. there is such a great divide between the haves and the have-nots. Sadly, it is only getting worse. On a global scale. I still believe that as individuals, we can do a lot. A little circle of kindness spread around us goes a long way!!
What a deep and insightful freewrite. It's so hard to see income disparity.
What an irony of life. Great freewrite.
It just seems like people are always thinking that what they have aren't enough so they are always holding back cause there are questions like 'what if I need it later' or sometimes the 'I will give when I have xxx sum of money'. The thing is we will never have enough if we are never contend with what we have at the present.
For the most NON-erotic story on my blog so far!!! Thanks to @snook challenging me:
https://steemit.com/freewrite/@eroticabian/isabella-to-the-rescue-isabella-the-mouse-part-3
In case it's too difficult to see, the tiny 'mouse' vase and flowers from the cover photo are sitting tucked into my cleavage. Yes, it is weird to do a story about talking mice and then find a related cleavage based selfie to go along with it!
Homeless in the library. Most of them using computers.
https://steemit.com/freewrite/@tristancarax/the-stall-part-5-homeless-day-40-5-minute-freewrite-tuesday
https://steemit.com/freewritecontest/@simgirl/day-222-5-minute-freewrite-tuesday-prompt-homeless
Even if I was homeless my cat would still love me :)
Awwwww :) As long as you keep her fed, anyway! (If she's anything like our cats!)
And they even be more loyal than humans. Hehe , I have really seen it with my eyes.
I was thinking the same thing!
The prompt made me start crying. It is such a loaded word :(
"Rent insecure". I have just recently learned of that phrase. I am rent insecure, meaning if our landlords raised our rent I would be forced to depend on others for help. I was homeless when I was 18, but I chose it. I wanted to leave Maine and I just flitted around and 'lived' in 30$ a night motels where the burnt plastic smell of crack was everywhere. I was homeless but I knew I could home. I didn't want to, oldest of four kids, entire family ADHD and blue collar. I later learned that brains of kids from struggling families show the same brain patterns as PTSD, and I didn't think that was surprising. I guess it's a 'thing' now, that huge chunks of the population are 'rent insecure' and of course, that is just a feeder for the ever growing homeless population. I live in Ocean Beach, I see some kindnesses as a shop owner across from my house allows a very sweet man to sleep in the nook as long as he keeps it tidy, which he does. I hear people on our facebook exhibit bitterness about how much they have to pay to live here and that 'these people get ocean side property for free". Its too much for 5 minutes and its very painful to think about .
Like you, I spent some time homeless in my late teens. I mostly chose that path to get out of a bad situation, but definitely had it better than some. At least I had my car to sleep in and occasionally friends couches.
I didn't know about the brains and PTSD, but like you said, it makes sense. I also hadn't heard 'rent insecure' before either, but I know far too many people who are in that situation. This is really eye opening.
I guess I accidently manifested it thinking about- I just got a letter today saying that my rent went up 120$ :( (well 60 for my part, so not enough to be homeless but less money for food lol- fucking california)
I so can relate. That is how I have spent most of my life in the US. there were short-lived periods in between where things seemed more secure. Add aging to the mix and things could be depressing. I just keep believing that things will work out one way or the other...
Here is mine
https://steemit.com/selfiecontest/@pixiehunter/freewrite-selfie-contest-day-16-prompt-homeless
it is hardly ever by choice
Selfie for homeless
Hmmm here we go -
https://steemit.com/freewrite/@honeydue/home-freewrite
My face at the prospect of sleeping in the park!
https://steemit.com/freewrite/@improv/homeless-5minutefreewrite
Um. I got sad.
Mine is sort of long today, but skip through the first part to get to a short part ;) A Pantoum :)
https://steemit.com/freewrite/@kimberlylane/homeless-a-pantoum